Steve Fossett's Unfinished Project

MazzThePianoman writes "Steve Fossett left behind a secret vessel project called the Deep Flight Challenger. Fossett was funding the development of a winged submersible being designed by Hawkes Ocean Technologies in California. The intent was for the vehicle to be capable of travel to the very bottom of the ocean — the Mariana Trench, more than 11,000 meters beneath the surface. 'It would have dramatically, dramatically opened the oceans for exploration. It would have been a game changer,' said Graham Hawkes, the designer. Testing had been completed at Department of Defense facilities. Field testing was only four weeks away when Fossett's untimely death, a year ago, put the project on hold." Hawkes Ocean Technologies owns the design, but the vehicle itself is owned by Fossett's estate.

Comments

And the story continues!

[TheModelEskimo]

"Take Fossett off the grid immediately," he ordered. "We need to wrap this up with a minimum of red tape." The response was quick. Within a week, Fossett's "corpse" was found in the Nevada Desert, the naked visitors from Titan had their submarine, and the President had yet another embarrassing affair off his plate.
It was still Fossett's move, however. Much as he enjoyed false identities, Brazilian women, and homes built from Cold War nuclear bunkers, the time was right to begin his next project.
It would begin with a small dog, two pairs of socks, and a rolled-up copy of People magazine.

Re:And the story continues!

[TheModelEskimo]

Dude, if anybody mods me interesting, ALL the blame is going in your lap.

Re:And the story continues!

[flyingsquid]

It's hard to know what to think about Fossett.

I mean, the dude flew around the world in a balloon. Flew around the world again, nonstop, solo, in an aircraft. Set all kinds of records in sailboats and sailplanes. He was building a submarine to "fly" to the deepest point on earth, but meanwhile he killed himself while scouting for a location to run his 800 mph rocket car and break the land speed record.

My first thought was, "man, this guy has a freakin' deathwish, or else he's a goddamn idiot. It's amazing that someone with so little sense of self-preservation lived this long." Doesn't the guy know that there are old pilots, and bold pilots, but there are no old, bold pilots?

But after thinking about it for a while... he probably did know that. He was flying long enough that he must have come to understand that if he kept it up the way he did, he wasn't going to die in his bed. Any one of his record-setting endeavors could have resulted in his death. But he must have decided that he'd rather live a brief life on his own terms, than a long, safe, boring life. After reading his Wikipedia entry, it's no surprise that he didn't die in an assisted living facility, but I think he'd probably be OK with the way he went out. Vicious downdrafts smashed his plane into bite-sized pieces against a granite escarpment of the Sierra Nevada mountains, while he was scouting a location to break the land speed record in a jet car, and he wasn't found for a year... the man had a hell of an interesting life, and one hell of a death, and packed more living into 63 years than most people could pack into 100. He did things on his terms, took chances, pushed things, and went out doing so. Personally, I'll play things a bit safer, but I do respect the guy's choices.

Re:What's that pressure again?

[Nutria]

Or the reporter misquoted him...

1 Atmosphere = 14.7 psi.
Pressure increases 1A every 33 feet
36,000 / 33 = 1091 Atmospheres.
1091 * 14.7 = 16038 psi

16,000 ~= 15000

http://www.onr.navy.mil/Focus/ocean/water/pressure1.htm

Re:What's that pressure again?

[Anonymous Coward]

you americans and your funny buggers math... every 10M of water adds 1 atmosphere of pressure. 10m = 2 atm, 20m = 3atm, 11000m = ~1101atm. why would you opt to use such "lovely round numbers" as 32 and 14.7, when you can use metric. IT'S SUPERIOR, BITCHES!

Re:The Delta Flier

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

If Star Trek Voyager has taught us anything, when you need to go deep into the ocean, just send the bad boy Tom Paris with trusty sidkick Ensin Kim in the Delta Flier. Thats more than enough to get hte job done. The only downside is that Lt Paris may make everyone listen to some drawn out letter hes writing to his father.... and quite frankly, its too dramatic for my tastes.
--
WWPD - What Would Picard Do?

Man... you really buried the needle on my virgin meter with that one.

Re:What's that pressure again?

[Teun]

I'm afraid you're mixing up two Decimal systems, the older Metric and the newer SI system.

Bar, Kg/cm2 and Atmosphere are certainly valid expressions for pressure in the Metric systems.
Another Decimal system is the SI and it prefers the use of Pascal for pressure.

A more complete explanation can be found here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SI